RoCEv2 for GigE Vision: A proposal to break the speed ceiling of GigE Vision

Product / 09.2023

As Machine Vision’s industry increasing requirements for speed, field of view and resolution are regularly met by sensor and camera manufacturers with new offering, the burden is regularly transferred onto the channel linking the sensor/camera and the processing system. Alternatively, the aggregation of multiple lower resolution, lower speed sensor data results in similar risks of data link congestion.
The GigE Vision protocol has managed, up to now, to evolve from 1 to 10… 25 Gb/s using the GVSP/UDP protocol. Yet speed increases quickly result in increased latency on the receiver side, possibly precluding any further reliable connectivity.
To address this limitation and open new perspectives in a standardized fashion for the whole industry, Euresys propose a new solution. By promoting the use of the Remote DMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv2) low level protocol , GigE Vision will accept significantly higher throughputs (25 Gbps … 200Gbps…) without clogging the interface processes (UDP/GVSP handshake, …).
Figure 1: Throughput comparison between protocols

These low-level accesses being handled at the lowest possible level, by the new protocol. The availability of modern Network Interface Controllers (NICs) for those speeds are confirming and supporting this trend.

Figure 2 : RoCEv2 NIC communication stack.
Source: https://www.roceinitiative.org/roce-introduction/

Sensor to Image (S2I), a Euresys subsidiary, has a long experience of supplying the vision industry with IP Cores for well known FPGA brands. These IP Cores help design and implement vision interfaces, and among them, GigE Vision. Such IP Cores offer camera and machine makers the benefits of reduced development costs, guaranteed vision standard compliance and reduced time-to-market for their new products. By complementing the IP Core delivery with a full featured and customizable Reference Design, the implementation of reliable GigE Vision transmission is readily available for the user’s own implementation. A separate Machine Vision Tool Kit (MVDK) is also available for an even faster hands-on experience and
proof of concept validation. To those considering the implementation of the new protocol, Sensor to Image offer a complete support package with training, maintenance contract and optional custom design services.
It is expected that the endorsement of this new protocol by the A3 GigE Vision standard committee will soon happen. Meanwhile, the IP Cores supporting this new protocol will already be available from Sensor to Image for evaluation in the first half of 2023.